1969 Mercedes-Benz 280SL

You may be cool but you are not rolling-around-Broad-Ripple-in-a-W113-with-a-matching-trilby cool. I couldn't tell if the Becker was tuned to smooth jazz of the University of Indianapolis's WICR-FM, but I wouldn't bet against it.

The Pagoda is such a good looking ride and I'd spotted this tasty 280SL around the 'hood a bunch before he rolled past in August of 2020 and gave me a good shot like this one. About a year and a half later, though, he pulled into the Fresh Market parking lot while I was having lunch. I hollered "Don't let anyone spit in my beer!", grabbed my D700 off the table, and jogged across the street.

The front end is Euro, lacking the bumper override guards and sporting the one-piece headlamp/fog light assemblies that were verboten on U.S.-market automobiles back then. However, the rear-view mirror appears to be a later post-'68 black-bordered safety unit and the rear fenders have the FMVSS-compliant side marker lights.

Could be a gray market car, could be that a later owner just liked the cleaner Euro schnozz. I mean, my '94 Mustang has '96 taillights because they look better and I've had people notice that.

A manual transmission and a speedometer readout in km/h lend support to the gray market theory. Base price on the U.S. import cars was $6,731, which is equivalent to about $57,700 in today's dough.

The 2.8L SOHC fuel-injected inline six was rated at 180 horsepower. Road & Track clocked a '69 test car with a four-speed auto at 9.9 seconds to sixty, by shifting the transmission manually at 6500rpm, and laid down a 17.1 quarter mile at 80 mph through the traps. The W113 was the last really nimble, lithe SL-class, tipping the scales at a bit over 3100 pounds. Later versions got panzer-heavy.

All these photos were snapped with the D700 and 28-200mm f/3.5-5.6G zoom lens.